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Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

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Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#141

Post by The_rationalist »

noname120 wrote: post #52
bad_user wrote: post #5

In the case of Chrome, you can't blame Google. They made a good browser, did some marketing and it got popular. However the current situation is worrisome, because alternative implementations are dying and in the case of the web, diversity is important. Both Opera and Microsoft's Edge are now powered by Chromium. Chromium is a project controlled by Google. Its redeeming quality, in terms of its open source nature, is…

> competitors such as Microsoft proved that they no longer have the capacity to develop a modern browser This is incorrect. They absolutely can as demonstrated by the fact that former Edge works great, has better hardware acceleration than Chrome, and consumes less power. However, they are not willing to anymore, which is a huge concern for future innovations in that domain.

"they are not willing to anymore" wtf does this mean? Have you looked at chromium commits activity? Microsoft is actively working on improving chromium, especially improving it's integration with windows 10. Convergence create synergies instead of reinventing the wheel and make Google no longer the only player in the development of chromium. Firefox has ~600000 commits Chrome has ~700000. Do you realize the order of magnitude of improvements that we users should have, if mozilla devs had worked in improving chrome instead?? No those numbers are far too much to realize for a human brain, but at least we can realize that we don't realize.

Btw hello double standards, why shouldn't QT, WPF or GTK have redundant implementations?

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#142

Post by reitanqild »

bad_user wrote: post #5

In the case of Chrome, you can't blame Google. They made a good browser, did some marketing and it got popular. However the current situation is worrisome, because alternative implementations are dying and in the case of the web, diversity is important. Both Opera and Microsoft's Edge are now powered by Chromium. Chromium is a project controlled by Google. Its redeeming quality, in terms of its open source nature, is…

> In the case of Chrome, you can't blame Google. They made a good browser, did some marketing and it got popular.

They spammed it massively as in

- adding it to other popular downloads

- ads everywhere on their properties, including on the front page where no one else has ever been allowed to buy ad spots

- lies: would shamelessly present itself as a better browser not just for users of old IE versions but also for users of Firefox and probably Opera as well.

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#143

Post by cosmodisk »

wguaa wrote: post #73
dalbasal wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" They made a good browser, did some marketing and it got popular. " They did make a good browser. However, their market share is not down to better browser or "some advertising." They use their other assets (search, youtube, android, docs..) to make chrome the "default" option. It's a dominance breeds dominance cycle... a hallmark of modern monopoly. Chrome wouldn't have gotten anywhere if it wasn't a very good brow…

>Chrome wouldn't have gotten anywhere if it wasn't a very good browser. It is good. It is not only good. When it came out it wiped the floor with the alternatives. Firefox 3, from that time, was absolutely pathetic in terms of performance. I remember sticking to 2 for a while. Even today Chrome is still the best, even if the margin has narrowed. Other browsers are having to adopt Blink to catch up.

Agree.I used to use Firefox and even Opera back in the day.Then both started lagging, even opening a simple website was always with some issues.Then I thought 'OK', let's try Chrome.It was faster, more compatible with some standards and simply felt better. I don't know how Mozilla managed to screw it up so well..

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#144

Post by masswerk »

reitanqild wrote: post #140
dTal wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that just cries out for some snarky user-agent-sniffing "upgrade your browser" overlay.

Would love that: some really funny message that would make people stop and think.

"Please downgrade your browser to Google Chrome 52"?

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#145

Post by Eupolemos »

AznHisoka wrote: post #115
dalbasal wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk about wiped the floor, but it gets subjective. Immediately before chrome launched, FF was slowly eating into IE's market share. Chrome was good, but so was FF. I don't think chrome ever had a lead in FF anything like the lead FF had over IE. Mozilla always had to play with a disadvantage. Still do.

Was it Chrome that came up with tabs? i cant seem to remember if FF had it. If FF didnt have tabs, that is enough for me to say Chrome wiped out the competition.

According to this site with a bit of link-documentation, FF was first and the Opera-claim is false.

https://allthatiswrong.wordpress.com/2011/01/14/opera-did-no...

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#146

Post by cletus »

It's hard to believe what a behemoth Chrome has become when it was only announced in 2008. What makes this even more amazing is it did this when IE/Edge ships as standard on Windows (which seems to be ~80% marketshare) and Safari ships as standard on OSX/iOS. It wasn't until Android 4.1 (2012) that Chrome even shipped on Android.

Chrome did several things really well out of the gate:

- Auto update. Words can't adequately describe just how freeing and refreshing this was (and is). Doesn't FF STILL ask you when you open it to install an update? In 2019? Really? For non-technical people, auto update is what you want. For technical people, it's also what you want.

- The Omnibar. To this day, FF persists with the two-box model where one is technically for URLs and the other for search. No one wants that of course so search basically works in the URL box. Why they don't just merge this is beyond me.

- N-Gram completion of searches in the Omnibar

- This was a big one: while tabs existed before Chrome, Chrome was the first major browser to have one process per tab to isolate crashes and performance issues. This was huge at the time.

- Javascript performance initially was night and day between Chrome and everyone else.

- Chrome was standards compliant.

- Chrome ran across multiple platforms

- (This came later) Chrome Sync is hugely convenient.

- (Also later) I'm not sure when this one started exactly but Chrome took a fairly aggressive stance against ISP DNS hijacking.

Where once MS leveraged their desktop OS dominance to kill Netscape, the fact that Chrome essentially forced MS to kill Edge in favour of rebranding Chrome is... astounding. This also goes to show just how problematic antitrust application is in tech because its amazing how quickly market dominance can disappear or cease to be relevant.

I find it laughable that some here and elsewhere attribute Chrome's rise to dark patterns or they throw around terms like "antitrust" without really knowing what that means (seriously, look deeper into Standard Oil) when there were and are a ton of good reasons to use Chrome that other vendors have been unable or unwilling to replicate.

Just take cross-platform as one. This made Safari and Edge a nonstarter for me from day one (despite Safari's brief venture into Windows support).

All this alarmist Butwhatifism about alleged market dominance is (IMHO) not only unhelpful, it's counterproductive. It's the boy who cried wolf. It makes people numb.

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#147

Post by apetrovic »

bad_user wrote: post #18
dTal wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In the case of Chrome, you can't blame Google. They made a good browser, did some marketing and it got popular. Where "did some marketing" equals "unethically abused monopoly position to aggressively push through dark patterns", sure. I think I can still blame them for that.

I've seen dark patterns from Google, but in the case of Chrome I have a hard time remembering any. Do you mean that they advertised for Chrome on their properties? Advertising on your own property is legitimate in my book. And simple advertising isn't a "dark pattern". Or do you mean something else?

Like when they deliberately cripple one of the most popular web sites for any other browser?

https://twitter.com/cpeterso/status/1021626510296285185

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#148

Post by fauigerzigerk »

chii wrote: post #101
dalbasal wrote: post #34

Antitrust law is, I suspect, hopelessly outdated... both the laws and the understanding of monopolies/trusts that are baked into them. These laws were based on 19th-century competition. The problems att were price fixing, predatory pricing (eg price low to kill competition then raise prices), supply chain bottlenecking (how you gonna sell your ore without my trains) ... industrial era trust stuff. The precedents and…

Breaking up a monopoly requires that said monopoly be bad for society, and it's adverse effects can't be fixed via markets due to reasons like size and reach. Monopoly in its own is neither good nor bad. Facebook has a monopoly in social network. Is that bad? What is the effect of the monopoly? Is Facebook's monopoly having an adverse effect, or is the adverse effect inherent in the way social networks work (and brea…

You could say that monopolies are inherently bad because they stifle innovation even if they don't lead to higher prices. An unassailable monopolist has no reason to innovate because competitors are effectively locked out.

But it appears to me that there is a psychological bias towards an exceedingly narrow definition of substitution goods and therefore markets, especially in digital technologies.

For instance, Microsoft clearly has an extremely dominant position in PC operating systems. The market for PC operating systems used to be synonymous with personal computing, but that is no longer true. Mobile devices now dominate personal computing.

So Microsoft has lost most of its monopolistic power without ever losing its dominance in the market as it was originally defined by regulators and users.

Similarly, search used to be synonymous with using a web search engine and Google clearly has a monopoly there. But now we search Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, etc for various specific things in different contexts and Google has to pay billions to buy users from Apple.

So my point is that yes, monopolies are inherently bad, but they are also inherently unstable in ways that are not adequately reflected in the current thinking around anti-trust regulation.

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#149

Post by notlukesky »

cletus wrote: post #146

It's hard to believe what a behemoth Chrome has become when it was only announced in 2008. What makes this even more amazing is it did this when IE/Edge ships as standard on Windows (which seems to be ~80% marketshare) and Safari ships as standard on OSX/iOS. It wasn't until Android 4.1 (2012) that Chrome even shipped on Android. Chrome did several things really well out of the gate: - Auto update. Words can't adequa…

Chrome was and unbelievably still is the most developer friendly. Our Opera extension has been languishing for 7 months for approval or a response to our emails (we gave up) and snooty FireFox put us through the ringer to get our extension (they call it an add-on) approved and more than 2 months. Chrome is amazing for developers. Maybe unless you are an adblocker. That might be the opportunity for MS Edge Chromium.

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#150

Post by StavrosK »

masswerk wrote: post #144
reitanqild wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would love that: some really funny message that would make people stop and think.

"Please downgrade your browser to Google Chrome 52"?

Yes! Why don't you do that? Every other website gives me flak for using Firefox, why are people reluctant to do the same when it's Chrome that doesn't work?

"Due to a bug in modern versions of Chrome, this website only works with Firefox, Safari and Chrome 52 or earlier."

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